City Notes – The Connaught Place Re-builders

It is the twilight hour in F Block, Connaught Place (CP). Amid apprehensions that the renovation work will not get over by October 3, the first day of the 2010 Commonwealth Games that are being organised in Delhi, tired-looking labourers are carrying on the mud work with shovels and spades.

Delhi’s colonial-era shopping district is being given a major facelift in the run-up to the D-day. Roads have been dug up, corridors have been barricaded and subways have been demolished to make way for new ones. Shoppers have to hop over dug-up portions to go from one block to another.

While many Delhiites are dreading the impression that foreign visitors will receive if the various construction projects don’t meet the deadline and CP continues to look bombed-out during the Games, the labourers are optimistic. “You don’t worry,” says Pashupati Mandal, 20, a migrant from Maldah, West Bengal. “We are working day and night. We will change the face of this place.” Mr Mandal and his fellow workers have set up a temporary house in a settlement near Minto Road, near New Delhi railway station. They are a part of 1,50,000 migrant labourers who are working to rebuild Delhi for the Games.

“You must take our photographs,” says Sunil Kumar, 24, a labourer from Bhagalpur, Bihar. “There were no cameras when the Taj Mahal was being built. Don’t miss the opportunity now.”

Jaideep Gupta, a foreign magazine vendor in F block, is skeptical. “Will the renovation work ever finish? The labourers break some wall here and before they could re-build it, they move ahead and break something else and this goes on,” he says. “Nowadays, there is such great technology that highways can be built overnight. I wonder why we can’t replace labourers with machines and finish off CP’s renovation in time.”

What will the labourers eat then? Ashok, 47, a migrant from Maldah, West Bengal, wakes up daily at 9 am sharp at his Minto Road house. His schedule, similar to thousands of other labourers, is simple. After a shower and prayers, he cooks food, mostly rice and vegetable curry, which he eats for breakfast and also packs for lunch. “If I work from 9 am to 5 pm, I get Rs 135,” he says. This amount is less than what you pay to watch movies in your neighbouring multiplex. “But if I continue till 11 pm, they give me Rs 270.”

Just then, a family carrying shopping bags walks past Mr Ashok and his colleagues. “Why is the photographer taking their pictures?” The Delhi Walla overhears a lady saying. “They’re just labourers.”

Be careful about what you say, Ma’am. These are the very people who may save your city from embarrassment in October.

Ad Enquiries

Contact mayankaustensoofi@gmail.com for ad enquiries.

2 Responses

Mungeri Lal · August 9, 2010 at 22:26:24 · →

nice segue after the emma post. These guys are more important than the emmas of the world. If these guys decide to rebel against authority, India will become an anarchy. Let’s give them work, respect and money.

Vishal · August 10, 2010 at 22:50:16 · →

A wonderful human perspective. Employment guarantee for the rural folks to eventually fill the urban-rural divide.

But I always wonder about the quality of workmanship and material, cost over runs and time delays due to lack of proper project planning and co-ordination among various contractors.

On The Delhi Walla

The blogger is a devotee of Sufi Saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and Author Arundhati Roy

The Caravan

“The Delhi Walla is one of the city’s best-known flâneurs.”

Time Out Delhi

“The Delhi Walla is a one-man encyclopedia of the city.”

The Guardian

“The Delhi Walla is a celebration of the food, culture and books of India’s capital.”

Biography of The Delhi Walla

Since 2007, Mayank Austen Soofi has been collecting hundreds of stories taking place in Delhi, through writing and photography, for his acclaimed website The Delhi Walla. Every day, Mayank walks around the city with his camera and notebook to track down the part of extraordinary that exists in the seemingly mundane aspects of urban lives. By exploring and documenting the streets, buildings, houses, cuisines, traditions and people of Delhi, his work is also an attempt to give the megalopolis an intimate voice, and to capture the passing of time in this otherwise restlessly changing city.

Mayank is also a daily columnist for Hindustan Times newspaper, and the author of ‘Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi’s Red Light District’ (published by Penguin) and the four-volume ‘The Delhi Walla’ guidebooks (HarperCollins).